Grace
by simkp27a
Summary: Before Jason disappeared and never came back, before Thalia ran away, it was just Jason and Thalia. Thalia and Jason. The two of them against the world. (One-shot)


p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"Life with Beryl was hard. She didn't feel like a mother to Thalia. Just Beryl. She didn't want to think of her as the person who birthed her, just a person who'd ruined their lives. It disgusted Thalia to think that this once-beautiful, now reduced to nothing, shared her DNA. She hoped alcoholism and being downright pathetic didn't run in the family./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"When she was six, Zeus came around again. Thalia would be lying if she said she wasn't surprised. Maybe he could be a real father. Maybe he could have given them a normal life. After all, he seemed... more responsible, more fatherly. She was six at the time, after all. So naïve. He and Beryl had a kid, and Thalia had a brother now, called Jason. When he was born, Thalia should have felt happy or excited. That's how a normal kid would have felt. But Thalia wasn't a normal kid. She looked at his adorable face, heard him cry, and all she felt was pity for the years to come. He looked really different, with his blonde hair. They shared their electric blue eyes, though, and while Thalia lacked a maternal instinct she knew she had to protect him./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"Beryl was becoming increasingly unstable. She drank more and more. She started doing more crazy stunts to get Zeus's attention, and Thalia was mad. Mad at Beryl for not being a mother. Mad at Zeus for abandoning them. Mad at Jason for being so needy, even if it wasn't his fault. Mad at herself for not being able to escape. She knew she couldn't leave with a 6-month old, though. /span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"Parenting at age seven just wasn't working for Thalia. Protecting Jason from Beryl when she was in a drunken rage was even harder. 'It's your fault he won't come back! You!re a problem child, and I know it. You make everything harder for me! I would be immortal, living in Olympus with the king of the gods, yet here I am now!' Thalia wouldn't cry though. She had to stay strong. For herself. For Jason. She locked them in rooms, tried to hit them both, and when she sobered up she didn't even apologise. She just drowned herself in that bottle of whiskey, mourning her reputation./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"When she was eight and Jason was two, he tried to eat a stapler. She rushed to stop him, and his lip was bleeding really badly. /spanspan class="s2" style="font-style: italic; font-size: 19.73px;"This is Beryl's job, not mine. She should be the one rushing to Jason and making sure he was alright/spanspan class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;", she thought bitterly. Alas, she was busy vomiting, getting ready to do something stupid and impulsive. She'd been branded a flop, a screw-up, past her prime years ago. Thalia didn't know why she still held out hope that she would improve./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"Later, Beryl decided to go for a picnic. /spanspan class="s2" style="font-style: italic; font-size: 19.73px;"Maybe,/spanspan class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;" Thalia thought, /spanspan class="s2" style="font-style: italic; font-size: 19.73px;"just maybe she'll become more than just Beryl. Maybe she'll be Mom. /spanspan class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"But as she went to the car to get the picnic basket, there was only a crying Beryl, no Jason to be seen. She claimed that Hera had taken Jason away, but Thalia didn't believe her. She searched and she searched and she searched. Jason was dead, she was sure of it./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; min-height: 23.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 19.7px; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 19.73px;"That was the last straw. Thalia left, and she swore she'd never come back./span/p 


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